By Jon Monk, Head of Performance

Search has moved quickly over the last few weeks. Here are six changes that matter for event websites this month, plus three smaller ones to watch. None of them need a developer or a website overhaul.

Search for your event's name and Google's summary now answers first

Google's AI Overviews (the AI-written summary at the top of some results pages) now appear on most searches for a brand name. DemandSphere, a search data company, found them on about 26% of the brand searches it tracks in early September and 82% by the end of the month, and Ahrefs found a similar 83% (Search Engine Land, Ahrefs). Google hasn't announced a change and there is no UK figure, so treat this as a direction rather than a measure of your event.

The first controlled experiment on Google's AI Mode, its chat-style search, shows the effect on clicks. In a US study of 1,100 people, normal search sent someone to a website on about 23% of searches, and AI Mode cut that to fewer than one in twenty (the study, Search Engine Journal).

Why it matters for event websites: a search for your event's name plus "dates" or "venue" is often the last step before registering. If the summary shows out of date information or incorrect details, that is what people see, and they may never click through to your page.

What to do:

• Search your event's name plus "dates", then plus "tickets" or "exhibit", and screenshot any AI summary.
• Check its dates, venue and prices against your website, and if needed fix the page it draws on, with the key facts in the opening lines.

Google has said how long changes take to show

At a Google event in Barcelona, Google's Gary Illyes shared rough figures for how long things take. Google finds a brand new page within about 20 hours, but takes around 30 days to revisit a page it already knows. Once it picks up a change, a new title or description usually shows within a day or two.

Why it matters for event websites: if you change your dates, move an early bird deadline or raise prices, Google may keep showing the old details for weeks unless you prompt it.

What to do:

• After any change to dates, prices or deadlines, use URL Inspection in Google Search Console and select Request indexing.
• Make deadline changes at least two weeks ahead, and keep the same page addresses for dates, pricing and registration every year.

Google now says a person must check AI-written content

Google's guidance now says it is "critical to manually factcheck and review" AI-generated content before publishing. That includes page titles, meta descriptions (the summary shown in search results) and image alt text (the image descriptions used by screen readers and search engines). Google also now treats invented author profiles, such as made-up names or AI headshots, as deception (Search Engine Land).

Why it matters for event websites: event marketers often write about sectors they aren't experts in, which is exactly where confident AI errors slip through.

What to do:

• Make a named person, not a second AI tool, responsible for checking dates, venue, prices, speaker details and sector claims on any AI-drafted page, including its title, meta description and alt text.
• Make sure every article carries a real, named author.

Word of mouth visits are growing, and most reports can't see them

Chartbeat found that "dark social", meaning links shared in texts, direct messages and private groups, grew from 7.1% to 11.3% of pageviews across its publisher network in two years (Chartbeat, Search Engine Journal). Most analytics tools can't trace these visits, so they show up as "direct". 

Why it matters for event websites: events spread by word of mouth, through exhibitor invitations, speakers sharing their sessions and colleagues forwarding links. Without tracking, that effort looks like it achieved nothing.

What to do:

• Add a tracking label to every link in your exhibitor, speaker and partner kits using Google's free Campaign URL Builder, with a source name such as "exhibitor-kit". The label stays with the link however often it is forwarded.
• Note this quarter's Direct traffic in Google Analytics as a starting point to compare against.
   

You can now see what Google's AI has collected about you

Google Business Profiles, the listings shown in Google Maps and beside search results, now have a Collected Info section showing what Google's automated systems have gathered about a business (Search Engine Land). Owners also now have four days to reject edits suggested by the public, after which Google may publish them if your website appears to back them up (Search Engine Roundtable).

Why it matters for event websites: for any event with a venue listing or organiser profile, this is the first chance to see and correct the facts Google's AI works from, and your website is what Google uses to settle disagreements.

What to do:

• Open Collected Info on your Business Profile and check the dates, location and description against your website.
• Switch on email notifications so you catch suggested edits within the four days.
   

A new spam filter in Google Analytics that can delete your registrations

Google Analytics now lets you list the web addresses you trust and discard traffic from everywhere else. It is a welcome fix for junk visits, but anything the filter blocks is gone permanently (Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal).

Why it matters for event websites: registration and ticketing often run on a separate web address. Leave it off the list and every registration it records disappears from your reports.

What to do:

• List every web address your event uses, including the registration or ticketing site.
• Create the filter in Testing mode first (Admin, then Data filters), and only switch it on once you've checked registrations still appear.
   

Also worth knowing:

• PDFs, an update. Last month we reported PDFs losing visibility in Google. Analyst Glenn Gabe has since documented PDFs being removed from Google's index across many sites, though Google hasn't commented. Check Search Console under Indexing, then "Crawled, currently not indexed", and move anything important from a PDF onto a normal web page (GSQi).
   
• Camera searches in Search Console. A new Multimodal filter shows when people found your pages by searching with a photo, such as through Google Lens. Many event websites won't see data yet, but it's worth checking after your next event (Google Search Central).
   
• Patience with ad campaigns. Google says automated bidding in Google Ads can need around 50 conversions to settle after a change, so avoid judging or changing low-volume event campaigns too early (Search Engine Land).
   

The pattern behind this month

Most of these changes sit in the small print: how long Google takes to notice an update, who checks AI-written text, and what Google's summary says about your event. None of it calls for a new website or a big budget, just accurate, consistent facts on your own site and a few minutes a month checking what Google is showing.

If you only do two things this month, search your event's name and check the AI summary, and make a named person responsible for checking anything AI has written before it goes live.

We track changes like these every week as part of our performance work with event organisers. If you'd like a straight, no-pitch look at how your own event currently shows up in AI and organic search, get in touch.

Join a free, live session on this topic. We cover changes like these in more depth in our free webinars for event organisers, with live sessions on AI visibility, search and website performance.

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